Interview with Next Issue Media's CTO, Keith Barraclough

Next Issue Media wants to be "the Netflix of magazines" and the have just released an iPad app that allows you access to 39 digital magazines - TIME, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Bon Appétit, Golf Digest and many more.

NIM face a lot of challenges - first they were very vocal about going to Android first - not the best decision and they wasted a year prioritizing the Android platform. My biggest issue is that they had a chance to re-imagine the digital content magazine market but opted to play safe with a slightly enhance digital replica model. They mention a "channel" approach but they don't deliver. This is a bundle of select magazines from a few top publishers not content around specific interests or channels. The selection is very limited, it's not open (yet) to publishers outside the consortium members. On the UI side - no retina support, no-inapp purchase, no targeting advertising around user interests, large, slow downloads. There are plenty of other ways to get this content without locking into a $9.99 month sub (for basic service). Hopefully the service will evolve - I'll check back in 6-12 months to see if there are significant enhancements.

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